Confidentiality Protection in the Census Bureau Quarterly Workforce Indicators
February 2006
Working Paper Number:
tp-2006-02
Abstract
The QuarterlyWorkforce Indicators are new estimates developed by the Census Bureau's Longitudinal
Employer-Household Dynamics Program as a part of its Local Employment Dynamics
partnership with 37 state Labor Market Information offices. These data provide detailed quarterly
statistics on employment, accessions, layoffs, hires, separations, full-quarter employment
(and related flows), job creations, job destructions, and earnings (for flow and stock categories of
workers). The data are released for NAICS industries (and 4-digit SICs) at the county, workforce
investment board, and metropolitan area levels of geography. The confidential microdata - unemployment
insurance wage records, ES-202 establishment employment, and Title 13 demographic
and economic information - are protected using a permanent multiplicative noise distortion factor.
This factor distorts all input sums, counts, differences and ratios. The released statistics are analytically
valid - measures are unbiased and time series properties are preserved. The confidentiality
protection is manifested in the release of some statistics that are flagged as "significantly distorted
to preserve confidentiality." These statistics differ from the undistorted statistics by a significant
proportion. Even for the significantly distorted statistics, the data remain analytically valid for
time series properties. The released data can be aggregated; however, published aggregates are
less distorted than custom postrelease aggregates. In addition to the multiplicative noise distortion,
confidentiality protection is provided by the estimation process for the QWIs, which multiply imputes
all missing data (including missing establishment, given UI account, in the UI wage record
data) and dynamically re-weights the establishment data to provide state-level comparability with
the BLS's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
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provides connections that go beyond potentially domain-specific author-defined keywords.
:
statistical,
report,
payroll,
agency,
respondent,
survey,
employed,
employ,
employee,
labor,
longitudinal,
economic census,
workplace,
workforce,
worker,
household,
census bureau,
research census,
employer household,
aging,
censuses surveys,
census employment,
2010 census
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several tasks, including entity tagging.
The model is able to label words and phrases by part-of-speech,
including "organizations." By filtering for frequent words and phrases labeled as "organizations", papers are
identified to contain references to specific institutions, datasets, and other organizations.
:
Bureau of Labor Statistics,
National Science Foundation,
Employer Identification Number,
American Economic Review,
Cornell University,
Unemployment Insurance,
Research Data Center,
North American Industry Classification System,
Social Security Number,
Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics,
Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research,
LEHD Program,
Business Register,
Employer-Household Dynamics,
Protected Identification Key,
Sloan Foundation,
Quarterly Workforce Indicators,
Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages,
Census Bureau Disclosure Review Board
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